I must not leave Scotland without writing you another letter.

On the 17th of this month I embarked at Newhaven, in the environs of

Edinburgh, on board the little steamer Prince Albert, for Stirling. On our

way we saw several samples of the Newhaven fishwives, a peculiar race,

distinguished by a costume of their own; fresh-colored women, who walk the

streets of Edinburgh with a large wicker-basket on their shoulders, a

short blue cloak of coarse cloth under the basket, short blue petticoats,

thick blue stockings, and a white cap. I was told that they were the

descendants of a little Flemish colony, which long ago settled at

Newhaven, and that they are celebrated for the readiness and point of

their jokes, which, like those of their sisters of Billingsgate, are not

always of the most delicate kind. Several of these have been related to

me, but on running them over in my mind, I find, to my dismay, that none

of them will look well on paper. The wit of the Newhaven fishwives seems

to me, however, like that of our western boatmen, to consist mainly in

the ready application of quaint sayings already current among themselves.

It was a wet day, with occasional showers, and sometimes a sprinkling of

Scotch mist. I tried the cabin, but the air was too close. The steamboats

in this country have but one deck, and that deck has no shelter, so I was

content to stand in the rain for the sake of the air and scenery. After

passing an island or two, the Frith, which forms the bay of Edinburgh,

contracts into the river Forth. We swept by country seats, one of which

was pointed out as the residence of the late Dugald Stewart, and another

that of the Earl of Elgin, the plunderer of the Parthenon; and castles,

towers, and churches, some of them in ruins ever since the time of John

Knox, and hills half seen in the fog, until we came opposite to the Ochil

mountains, whose grand rocky buttresses advanced from the haze almost to

the river. Here, in the windings of the Forth, our steamer went many times

backward and forward, first towards the mountains and then towards the

level country to the south, in almost parallel courses, like the track of

a ploughman in a field. At length we passed a ruined tower and some

fragments of massy wall which once formed a part of Cambus Kenneth Abbey,

seated on the rich lands of the Forth, for the monks, in Great Britain at

least, seem always to have chosen for the site of their monasteries, the

banks of a stream which would supply them with trout and salmon for

Fridays. We were now in the presence of the rocky hills of Stirling, with

the town on its declivity, and the ancient castle, the residence of the

former kings of Scotland, on its summit.

We went up through the little town to the castle, which is still kept in

perfect order, and the ramparts of which frown as grimly over the

surrounding country as they did centuries ago. No troops however are now

stationed here; a few old gunners alone remain, and Major somebody, I

forget his name, takes his dinners in the banqueting-room and sleeps in

the bed-chamber of the Stuarts. I wish I could communicate the impression

which this castle and the surrounding region made upon me, with its

vestiges of power and magnificence, and its present silence and desertion.

The passages to the dungeons where pined the victims of state, in the very

building where the court held its revels, lie open, and the chapel in

which princes and princesses were christened, and worshiped, and were

crowned and wed, is turned into an armory. From its windows we were shown,

within the inclosure of the castle, a green knoll, grazed by cattle, where

the disloyal nobles of Scotland were beheaded. Close to the castle is a

green field, intersected with paths, which we were told was the

tilting-ground, or place of tournaments, and beside it rises a rock, where

the ladies of the court sat to witness the combats, and which is still

called the Ladies' Rock. At the foot of the hill, to the right of the

castle, stretches what was once the royal park; it is shorn of its trees,

part is converted into a race-course, part into a pasture for cows, and

the old wall which marked its limits is fallen down. Near it you see a

cluster of grassy embankments of a curious form, circles and octagons and

parallelograms, which bear the name of King James's Knot, and once formed

a part of the royal-gardens, where the sovereign used to divert himself

with his courtiers. The cows now have the spot to themselves, and have

made their own paths and alleys all over it. "Yonder, to the southwest of

the castle," said a sentinel who stood at the gate, "you see where a large

field has been lately ploughed, and beyond it another, which looks very

green. That green field is the spot where the battle of Bannockburn was

fought, and the armies of England were defeated by Bruce." I looked, and

so fresh and bright was the verdure, that it seemed to me as if the earth

was still fertilized with the blood of those who fell in that desperate

struggle for the crown of Scotland. Not far from this, the spot was shown

us where Wallace was defeated at the battle of Falkirk. This region is now

the scene of another and an unbloody warfare; the warfare between the Free

Church and the Government Church. Close to the church of the

establishment, at the foot of the rock of Stirling, the soldiers of the

Free Church have erected their place of worship, and the sound of hammers

from the unfinished interior could be heard almost up to the castle.

We took places the same day in the coach for Callander, in the Highlands.

In a short time we came into a country of hillocks and pastures brown and

barren, half covered with ferns, the breckan of the Scotch, where the

broom flowered gaudily by the road-side, and harebells now in bloom, in

little companies, were swinging, heavy with the rain, on their slender

stems.

Crossing the Teith we found ourselves in Doune, a Highland village, just

before entering which we passed a throng of strapping lasses, who had just

finished their daily task at a manufactory on the Teith, and were

returning to their homes. Between Doune and Callander we passed the woods

of Cambus-More, full of broad beeches, which delight in the tenacious

mountain soil of this district. This was the seat of a friend of the Scott

family, and here Sir Walter in his youth passed several summers, and

became familiar with the scenes which he has so well described in his Lady

of the Lake. At Callander we halted for the night among a crowd of

tourists, Scotch, English, American, and German, more numerous than the

inn at which we stopped could hold. I went out into the street to get a

look at the place, but a genuine Scotch mist covering me with water soon

compelled me to return. I heard the people, a well-limbed brawny race of

men, with red hair and beards, talking to each other in Gaelic, and saw

through the fogs only a glimpse of the sides of the mountains and crags

which surrounded the village.

The next morning was uncommonly bright and clear, and we set out early for

the Trosachs. We now saw that the village of Callander lay under a dark

crag, on the banks of the Teith, winding pleasantly among its alders, and

overlooked by the grand summit of Benledi, which rises to the height of

three thousand feet. A short time brought us to the stream

"Which, daughter of three mighty lakes,

From Vennachar in silver breaks,"

and we skirted the lake for nearly its whole length. Loch Vennachar lies

between hills of comparatively gentle declivity, pastured by flocks, and

tufted with patches of the prickly gorse and coarse ferns. On its north

bank lies Lanrick Mead, a little grassy level where Scott makes the tribe

of Clan Alpine assemble at the command of Roderick Dhu. At a little

distance from Vennachar lies Loch Achray, which we reached by a road

winding among shrubs and low trees, birches, and wild roses in blossom,

with which the air was fragrant. Crossing a little stone bridge, which our

driver told us was the Bridge of Turk, we were on the edge of Loch Achray,

a little sheet of water surrounded by wild rocky hills, with here and

there an interval of level grassy margin, or a grove beside the water.

Turning from Loch Achray we reached an inn with a Gaelic name, which I

have forgotten how to spell, and which if I were to spell it, you could

not pronounce. This was on the edge of the Trosachs, and here we

breakfasted.

It is the fashion, I believe, for all tourists to pass through the

Trosachs on foot. The mob of travellers, with whom I found myself on the

occasion—there were some twenty of them—did so, to a man; even the

ladies, who made about a third of the number, walked. The distance to Loch

Katrine is about a mile and a half, between lofty mountains, along a glen

filled with masses of rock, which seem to have been shaken by some

convulsion of nature from the high steeps on either side, and in whose

shelves and crevices time had planted a thick wood of the birch and ash.

But I will not describe the Trosachs after Walter Scott. Read what he says

of them in the first canto of his poem. Loch Katrine, when we reached it,

was crisped into little waves, by a fresh wind from the northwest, and a

boat, with four brawny Highlanders, was waiting to convey us to the head

of the lake. We launched upon the dark deep water, between craggy and

shrubby steeps, the summits of which rose on every side of us; and one of

the rowers, an intelligent-looking man, took upon himself the task of

pointing out to us the places mentioned by the poet. "There," said he, as

we receded from the shore, "is the spot in the Trosachs where Fitz James

lost his gallant gray." He then repeated, in a sort of recitation,

dwelling strongly on the rhyme, the lines in the Lady of the Lake which

relate that incident. "Yonder is the island where Douglass concealed his

daughter. Under that broad oak, whose boughs almost dip into the water,

was the place where her skiff was moored. On that rock, covered with

heath, Fitz James stood and wound his bugle. Near it, but out of sight, is

the silver strand where the skiff received him on board."

Further on, he pointed out, on the south side of the lake, half way up

among the rocks of the mountain, the place of the Goblin Cave, and still

beyond it

"The wild pass, where birches wave,

Of Beal-a-nam-bo."

On the north shore, the hills had a gentler slope, and on their skirts,

which spread into something like a meadow, we saw a solitary dwelling. "In

that," said he, "Rob Roy was born." In about two hours, our strong-armed

rowers had brought us to the head of the lake. Before we reached it, we

saw the dark crest of Ben Lomond, loftier than any of the mountains around

us, peering over the hills which formed the southern rampart of Loch

Katrine. We landed, and proceeded—the men on foot and the women on ponies

—through a wild craggy valley, overgrown with low shrubs, to Inversnaid,

on Loch Lomond, where a stream freshly swollen by rains tumbled down a

pretty cascade into the lake. As we descended the steep bank, we saw a man

and woman sitting on the grass weaving baskets; the woman, as we passed,

stopped her work to beg; and the children, chubby and ruddy, came running

after us with "Please give me a penny to buy a scone."

At Iversnaid we embarked in a steamboat which took us to the northern

extremity of the lake, where it narrows into a channel like a river. Here

we stopped to wait the arrival of a coach, and, in the mean time, the

passengers had an hour to wander in the grassy valley of Glenfalloch,

closed in by high mountains. I heard the roar of mountain-streams, and

passing northward, found myself in sight of two torrents, one from the

east, and the other from the west side of the valley, throwing themselves,

foaming and white, from precipice to precipice, till their waters, which

were gathered in the summit of the mountains, reached the meadows, and

stole through the grass to mingle with those of the lake.

The coach at length arrived, and we were again taken on board the steamer,

and conveyed the whole length of Loch Lomond to its southern extremity. We

passed island after island, one of which showed among its thick trees the

remains of a fortress, erected in the days of feudal warfare and robbery,

and another was filled with deer. Towards the southern end of the lake,

the towering mountains, peak beyond peak, which overlook the lake, subside

into hills, between which the stream called Leven-water flows out through

a rich and fertile valley.

Coaches were waiting at Balloch, where we landed, to take us to Dumbarton.

Near the lake we passed a magnificent park, in the midst of which stood a

castle, a veritable castle, a spacious massive building of stone, with a

tower and battlements, on which a flag was flying. "It belongs to a

dry-goods merchant in Glasgow," said the captain of the steamboat, who was

in the coach with us; "and the flag is put up by his boys. The merchants

are getting finer seats than the nobility." I am sorry to say that I have

forgotten both the name of the merchant and that of his castle. He was, as

I was told, a liberal, as well as an opulent man; had built a school-house

in the neighborhood, and being of the Free Church party, was then engaged

in building a church.

Near Renton, on the banks of the Leven, I saw a little neighborhood,

embosomed in old trees. "There," said our captain, "Smollet was born." A

column has been erected to his memory in the town of Renton, which we saw

as we passed. The forked rock, on which stands Dumbarton Castle, was now

in sight overlooking the Clyde; we were whirled into the town, and in a

few minutes were on board a steamer which, as evening set in, landed us at

Glasgow.

I must reserve what I have to tell of Glasgow and Ayrshire for yet another

letter.

Letter XXIV.

Glasgow.—Ayr.—Alloway.

Dublin, _July_ 24, 1845.

I promised another letter concerning Scotland, but I had not time to write

it until the Irish Channel lay between me and the Scottish coast.

When we reached Glasgow on the 18th of July, the streets were swarming

with people. I inquired the occasion, and was told that this was the

annual fair. The artizans were all out with their families, and great

numbers of country people were sauntering about. This fair was once, what

its name imports, an annual market for the sale of merchandise; but it is

now a mere holiday in which the principal sales, as it appeared to me,

were of gingerbread and whisky. I strolled the next morning to the Green,

a spacious open ground that stretches along the Clyde. One part of it was

occupied with the booths and temporary theatres and wagons of showmen,

around and among which a vast throng was assembled, who seemed to delight

in being deafened with the cries of the showmen and the music of their

instruments. In one place a band was playing, in another a gong was

thundering, and from one of the balconies a fellow in regal robes and a

pasteboard crown, surrounded by several persons of both sexes in tawdry

stage-dresses, who seemed to have just got out of bed and were yawning and

rubbing their eyes, was vociferating to the crowd in praise of the

entertainment which was shortly to be offered them, while not far off the

stentor of a rival company, under a flag which announced a new pantomime

for a penny, was declaiming with equal vehemence. I made my way with

difficulty through the crowd to the ancient street called the Salt Market,

in which Scott places the habitation of Baillie Jarvie. It was obstructed

with little stalls, where toys and other inconsiderable articles were

sold. Here at the corner of one of the streets stands the old tower of the

Tolbooth where Rob Roy was confined, a solid piece of ancient

architecture. The main building has been removed and a modern house

supplies its place; the tower has been pierced below for a thoroughfare,

and its clock still reports the time of day to the people of Glasgow. The

crowd through which I passed had that squalid appearance which marks

extreme poverty and uncertain means of subsistence, and I was able to form

some idea of the prodigious number of this class in a populous city of

Great Britain like Glasgow. For populous she is, and prosperous as a city,

increasing with a rapidity almost equal to that of New York, and already

she numbers, it is estimated, three hundred thousand inhabitants. Of

these it is said that full one-third are Irish by birth or born of Irish

parents.

The next day, which was Sunday, before going to church, I walked towards

the west part of the city; where the streets are broad and the houses

extremely well-built, of the same noble material as the new town of

Edinburgh; and many of the dwellings have fine gardens. Their sites in

many places overlook the pleasant valley of the Clyde, and I could not

help acknowledging that Glasgow was not without claim to the epithet of

beautiful, which I should have denied her if I had formed my judgment from

the commercial streets only. The people of Glasgow also have shown their

good sense in erecting the statues which adorn their public squares, only

to men who have some just claim to distinction. Here are no statues, for

example, of the profligate Charles II., or the worthless Duke of York, or

the silly Duke of Cambridge, as you will see in other cities; but here the

marble effigy of Walter Scott looks from a lofty column in the principal

square, and not far from it is that of the inventor Watt; while the

statues erected to military men are to those who, like Wellington, have

acquired a just renown in arms. The streets were full of well-dressed

persons going to church, the women for the most part, I must say, far from

beautiful. I turned with the throng and followed it as far as St. Enoch's

church, in Buchanan-street, where I heard a long discourse from a

sensible preacher, Dr. Barr, a minister of the established Kirk of

Scotland.

In the afternoon I climbed one of the steep streets to the north of my

hotel, and found three places of worship, built with considerable

attention to architectural effect, and fresh, as it seemed, from the hands

of the mason. They all, as I was told, belonged to the Free Kirk, which

has lately been rent from the establishment, and threatens to leave it a

mere shadow of a church, like the Episcopal church in Ireland. "Nothing,"

said an intelligent Glasgow friend of mine, "can exceed the zeal of the

friends of the Free Church. One of our Glasgow merchants has just given

fifteen hundred pounds towards the fund for providing _manses_, or

parsonages, for the ministers of that Church, and I know of several who

have subscribed a thousand. In all the colleges of Scotland, the

professors are obliged, by way of test, to declare their attachment to the

Presbyterian Church as by law established. Parliament has just refused to

repeal this test, and the friends of the Free Church are determined to

found a college of their own. Twenty thousand pounds had already been

subscribed before the government refused to dispense with this test, and

the project will now be supported with more zeal than ever."

I went into one of these Free churches, and listened to a sermon from Dr.

Lindsay, a comfortable-looking professor in some new theological school.

It was quite common-place, though not so long as the Scotch ministers are

in the habit of giving; for excessive brevity is by no means their

besetting infirmity. At the close of the exercises, he announced that a

third service would be held in the evening. "The subject," continued he,

"will be the thoughts and exercises of Jonah in the whale's belly."

In returning to my hotel, I passed by another new church, with an

uncommonly beautiful steeple and elaborate carvings. I inquired its name;

it was the new St. John's, and was another of the buildings of the Free

Church.

On Monday we made an excursion to the birthplace of Burns. The railway

between Glasgow and Ayr took us through Paisley, worthy of note as having

produced our eminent ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, and along the banks

of Castle Semple Loch, full of swans, a beautiful sheet of water, sleeping

among green fields which shelve gently to its edge. We passed by Irvine,

where Burns learned the art of dressing flax, and traversing a sandy

tract, close to the sea, were set down at Ayr, near the new bridge. You

recollect Burns's dialogue between the "auld brig" of Ayr and the new, in

which the former predicted that vain as her rival might be of her new and

fresh appearance, the time would shortly come when she would be as much

dilapidated as herself. The prediction is fulfilled; the bridge has begun

to give way, and workmen are busy in repairing its arches.

We followed a pleasant road, sometimes agreeably shaded by trees, to

Alloway. As we went out of Ayr we heard a great hammering and clicking of

chisels, and looking to the right we saw workmen busy in building another

of the Free Churches, with considerable elaborateness of architecture, in

the early Norman style. The day was very fine, the sun bright, and the sky

above us perfectly clear; but, as is generally the case in this country

with an east wind, the atmosphere was thick with a kind of dry haze which

veils distant objects from the sight. The sea was to our right, but we

could not discern where it ended and the horizon began, and the mountains

of the island of Arran and the lone and lofty rock of Ailsa Craig looked

at first like faint shadows in the thick air, and were soon altogether

undistinguishable. We came at length to the little old painted kirk of

Alloway, in the midst of a burying ground, roofless, but with gable-ends

still standing, and its interior occupied by tombs. A solid upright marble

slab, before the church, marks the place where William Burns, the father

of the poet, lies buried. A little distance beyond flows the Doon under

the old bridge crossed by Tam O'Shanter on the night of his adventure with

the witches.

This little stream well deserves the epithet of "bonnie," which Burns has

given it. Its clear but dark current, flows rapidly between banks often

shaded with ashes, alders, and other trees, and sometimes overhung by

precipices of a reddish-colored rock. A little below the bridge it falls

into the sea, but the tide comes not up to embitter its waters. From the

west bank of the stream the land rises to hills of considerable height,

with a heathy summit and wooded slopes, called Brown Carrick Hill. Two

high cliffs near it impend over the sea, which are commonly called the

Heads of Ayr, and not far from these stands a fragment of an ancient

castle. I have sometimes wondered that born as Burns was in the

neighborhood of the sea, which I was told is often swelled into prodigious

waves by the strong west winds that beat on this coast, he should yet have

taken little if any of his poetic imagery from the ocean, either in its

wilder or its gentler moods. But his occupations were among the fields,

and his thoughts were of those who dwelt among them, and his imagination

never wandered where his feelings went not.

The monument erected to Burns, near the bridge, is an ostentatious thing,

with a gilt tripod on its summit. I was only interested to see some of the

relics of Burns which it contains, among which is the Bible given by him

to his Highland Mary. A road from the monument leads along the stream

among the trees to a mill, at a little distance above the bridge, where

the water passes under steep rocks, and I followed it. The wild rose and

the woodbine were in full bloom in the hedges, and these to me were a

better memorial of Burns than any thing which the chisel could execute. A

barefoot lassie came down the grassy bank among the trees with a pail, and

after washing her feet in the swift current filled the pail and bore it

again over the bank.

We saw many visitors sauntering about the bridge or entering the

monument; some of them seemed to be country people,—young men with their

sisters and sweethearts, and others in white cravats with a certain

sleekness of appearance I took to be of the profession of divinity. At the

inn beside the Doon, a young woman, with a face and head so round as

almost to form a perfect globe, gave us a dish of excellent strawberries

and cream, and we set off for the house in which Burns was born.

It is a clay-built cottage of the humblest class, and now serves, with the

addition of two new rooms of a better architecture, for an ale-house. Mrs.

Hastings, the landlady, showed us the register, in which we remarked that

a very great number of the visitors had taken the pains to write

themselves down as shoemakers. Major Burns, one of the sons of the poet,

had lately visited the place with his two daughters and a younger brother,

and they had inscribed their names in the book.

We returned to Ayr by a different road from that by which we went to

Alloway. The haymakers were at work in the fields, and the vegetation was

everywhere in its highest luxuriance. You may smile at the idea, but I

affirm that a potato field in Great Britain, at this season, is a prettier

sight than a vineyard in Italy. In this climate, the plant throws out an

abundance of blossoms, pink and white, and just now the potato fields are

as fine as so many flower gardens.

We crossed the old bridge of Ayr, which is yet in good preservation,

though carriages are not allowed to pass over it. Looking up the stream,

we saw solitary slopes and groves on its left bank, and I fancied that I

had in my eye the sequestered spot on the banks of the Ayr, where Burns

and his Highland Mary held the meeting described in his letters, and

parted to meet no more.

Letter XXV.

Ireland.—Dublin.

Dublin, _July_ 25, 1845.

We left Glasgow on the morning of the 22d, and taking the railway to

Ardrossan were soon at the beach. One of those iron steamers which

navigate the British waters, far inferior to our own in commodious and

comfortable arrangements, but strong and safe, received us on board, and

at ten o'clock we were on our way to Belfast. The coast of Ayr, with the

cliff near the birthplace of Burns, continued long in sight; we passed

near the mountains of Arran, high and bare steeps swelling out of the sea,

which had a look of almost complete solitude; and at length Ailsa Craig

began faintly to show itself, high above the horizon, through the thick

atmosphere. We passed this lonely rock, about which flocks of sea-birds,

the solan goose, and the gannet, on long white wings with jetty tips, were

continually wheeling, and with a glass we could discern them sitting by

thousands on the shelves of the rock, where they breed. The upper part of

Ailsa, above the cliffs, which reach more than half-way to the summit,

appears not to be destitute of soil, for it was tinged with a faint

verdure.

In about nine hours—we were promised by a lying advertisement it should

be six—we had crossed the channel, over smooth water, and were making our

way, between green shores almost without a tree, up the bay, at the bottom

of which stands, or rather lies, for its site is low, the town of Belfast.

We had yet enough of daylight left to explore a part at least of the city.

"It looks like Albany," said my companion, and really the place bears some

resemblance to the streets of Albany which are situated near the river,

nor is it without an appearance of commercial activity. The people of

Belfast, you know, are of Scotch origin, with some infusion of the

original race of Ireland. I heard English spoken with a Scotch accent, but

I was obliged to own that the severity of the Scottish physiognomy had

been softened by the migration and the mingling of breeds. I presented one

of my letters of introduction, and met with so cordial a reception, that I

could not but regret the necessity of leaving Belfast the next morning.

At an early hour the next day we were in our seats on the outside of the

mail-coach. We passed through a well-cultivated country, interspersed with

towns which had an appearance of activity and thrift. The dwellings of the

cottagers looked more comfortable than those of the same class in

Scotland, and we were struck with the good looks of the people, men and

women, whom we passed in great numbers going to their work. At length,

having traversed the county of Down, we entered Lowth, when an immediate

change was visible. We were among wretched and dirty hovels,

squalid-looking men and women, and ragged children—the stature of the

people seemed dwarfed by the poverty in which they have so long lived, and

the jet-black hair and broad faces which I saw around me, instead of the

light hair and oval countenances so general a few miles back, showed me

that I was among the pure Celtic race.

Shortly after entering the county of Lowth, and close on the confines of

Armagh, perhaps partly within it, we traversed, near the village of

Jonesborough, a valley full of the habitations of peat-diggers. Its aspect

was most remarkable, the barren hills that inclose it were dark with heath

and gorse and with ledges of brown rock, and their lower declivities, as

well as the level of the valley, black with peat, which had been cut from

the ground and laid in rows. The men were at work with spades cutting it

from the soil, and the women were pressing the water from the portions

thus separated, and exposing it to the air to dry. Their dwellings were of

the most wretched kind, low windowless hovels, no higher than the heaps of

peat, with swarms of dirty children around them. It is the property of

peat earth to absorb a large quantity of water, and to part with it

slowly. The springs, therefore, in a region abounding with peat make no

brooks; the water passes into the spongy soil and remains there, forming

morasses even on the slopes of the hills.

As we passed out of this black valley we entered a kind of glen, and the

guard, a man in a laced hat and scarlet coat, pointed to the left, and

said, "There is a pretty place." It was a beautiful park along a

hill-side, groves and lawns, a broad domain, jealously inclosed by a thick

and high wall, beyond which we had, through the trees, a glimpse of a

stately mansion. Our guard was a genuine Irishman, strongly resembling the

late actor Power in physiognomy, with the very brogue which Power

sometimes gave to his personages. He was a man of pithy speech,

communicative, and acquainted apparently with every body, of every class,

whom we passed on the road. Besides him we had for fellow-passengers three

very intelligent Irishmen, on their way to Dublin. One of them was a tall,

handsome gentleman, with dark hair and hazel eyes, and a rich South-Irish

brogue. He was fond of his joke, but next to him sat a graver personage,

in spectacles, equally tall, with fair hair and light-blue eyes, speaking

with a decided Scotch accent. By my side was a square-built, fresh-colored

personage, who had travelled in America, and whose accent was almost

English. I thought I could not be mistaken in supposing them to be samples

of the three different races by which Ireland is peopled.

We now entered a fertile district, meadows heavy with grass, in which the

haymakers were at work, and fields of wheat and barley as fine as I had

ever seen, but the habitations of the peasantry had the same wretched

look, and their inmates the same appearance of poverty. Wherever the

coach stopped we were beset with swarms of beggars, the wittiest beggars

in the world, and the raggedest, except those of Italy. One or two green

mounds stood close to the road, and we saw others at a distance. "They are

Danish forts," said the guard. "Every thing we do not know the history of,

we put upon the Danes," added the South of Ireland man. These grassy

mounds, which are from ten to twenty feet in height, are now supposed to

have been the burial places of the ancient Celts. The peasantry can with

difficulty be persuaded to open any of them, on account of a prevalent

superstition that it will bring bad luck. A little before we arrived at

Drogheda, I saw a tower to the right, apparently a hundred feet in height,

with a doorway at a great distance from the ground, and a summit somewhat

dilapidated. "That is one of the round towers of Ireland, concerning which

there is so much discussion," said my English-looking fellow-traveller.

These round towers, as the Dublin antiquarians tell me, were probably

built by the early Christian missionaries from Italy, about the seventh

century, and were used as places of retreat and defense against the

pagans.

Not far from Drogheda, I saw at a distance a quiet-looking valley. "That,"

said the English-looking passenger, "is the valley of the Boyne, and in

that spot was fought the famous battle of the Boyne." "Which the Irish are

fighting about yet, in America," added the South of Ireland man. They

pointed out near the spot, a cluster of trees on an eminence, where James

beheld the defeat of his followers. We crossed the Boyne, entered

Drogheda, dismounted among a crowd of beggars, took our places in the most

elegant railway wagon we had ever seen, and in an hour were set down in

Dublin.

I will not weary you with a description of Dublin. Scores of travellers

have said that its public buildings are magnificent, and its rows of

private houses, in many of the streets, are so many ranges of palaces.

Scores of travellers have said that if you pass out of these fine streets,

into the ancient lanes of the city, you see mud-houses that scarcely

afford a shelter, and are yet inhabited.

"Some of these," said a Dublin acquaintance to me, "which are now roofless

and no longer keep out the weather, yet show by their elaborate cornices

and their elegant chimney-pieces, that the time has been, and that not

very long since, when they were inhabited by the opulent class." He led me

back of Dublin castle to show me the house in which Swift was born. It

stands in a narrow, dirty lane called Holy's court, close to the

well-built part of the town: its windows are broken out, and its shutters

falling to pieces, and the houses on each side are in the same condition,

yet they are swarming with dirty and ragged inmates.

I have seen no loftier nor more spacious dwellings than those which

overlook St. Stephen's Green, a noble park, planted with trees, under

which the showery sky and mild temperature maintain a verdure all the

year, even in midwinter. About Merrion square, another park, the houses

have scarcely a less stately appearance, and one of these with a strong

broad balcony, from which to address the people in the street, is

inhabited by O'Connell. The park of the University, in the midst of the

city, is of great extent, and the beautiful public grounds called Phenix

Park, have a circumference of eight miles. "Do not suppose," said a friend

to me, "that these spacious houses which you see about you, are always

furnished with a magnificence corresponding to that of their exterior. It

is often the case that a few rooms only of these great ranges of

apartments are provided with furniture, and the rest left empty and

unoccupied. The Irishman of the higher class, as well as of the humbler,

is naturally improvident, generous, fond of enjoying the moment, and does

not allow his income to accumulate, either for the purpose of hoarding or

the purpose of display."

I went into Conciliation Hall, which resembles a New York lecture-room,

and was shown the chair where the autocrat of Ireland, the Liberator, as

they call him, sits near the chairman at the repeal meetings. Conciliation

Hall was at that time silent, for O'Connell was making a journey through

several of the western counties, I think, of Ireland, for the purpose of

addressing and encouraging his followers. I inquired of an intelligent

dissenter what was the state of the public feeling in Ireland, with regard

to the repeal question, and whether the popularity of O'Connell was still

as great as ever.

"As to O'Connell," he answered, "I do not know whether his influence is

increasing, but I am certain that it is not declining. With regard to the

question of repealing the Union, there is a very strong leaning among

intelligent men in Ireland to the scheme of a federal government, in other

words to the creation of an Irish parliament for local legislation,

leaving matters which concern Ireland in common with the rest of the

empire to be decided by the British Parliament."

I mentioned an extraordinary declaration which I had heard made by John

O'Connell on the floor of Parliament, in answer to a speech of Mr. Wyse,

an Irish Catholic member, who supported the new-colleges bill. This

younger O'Connell denounced Wyse as no Catholic, as an apostate from his

religion, for supporting the bill, and declared that for himself, after

the Catholic Bishops of Ireland had expressed their disapproval of the

bill, he inquired no further, but felt himself bound as a faithful member

of the Catholic Church to oppose it.

"It is that declaration," said the gentleman, "which has caused a panic

among those of the Irish Protestants who were well-affected to the cause

of repeal. If the Union should be repealed, they fear that O'Connell,

whose devotion to the Catholic Church appears to grow stronger and

stronger, and whose influence over the Catholic population is almost

without limit, will so direct the legislation of the Irish Parliament as

only to change the religious oppression that exists from one party to the

other. There is much greater liberality at present among the Catholics

than among their adversaries in Ireland, but I can not say how much of it

is owing to the oppression they endure. The fact that O'Connell has been

backward to assist in any church reforms in Ireland has given occasion to

the suspicion that he only desires to see the revenues and the legal

authority of the Episcopal Church transferred to the Catholic Church. If

that should happen, and if the principle avowed by John O'Connell should

be the rule of legislation, scarcely any body but a Catholic will be able

to live in Ireland."

Mr. Wall, to whom our country is indebted for the Hudson River Portfolio,

and who resided in the United States for twenty-two years, is here, and

is, I should think, quite successful in his profession. Some of his later

landscapes are superior to any of his productions that I remember. Among

them is a view on Lough Corrib, in which the ruined castle on the island

of that lake is a conspicuous object. It is an oil painting, and is a work

of great merit. The Dublin Art Union made it their first purchase from the

exhibition in which it appeared. Mr. Wall remembers America with much

pleasure, and nothing can exceed his kindness to such of the Americans as

he meets in Ireland.

He took us to the exhibition of the Royal Hibernian Society. Among its

pictures is a portrait of a lady by Burton, in water-colors, most

surprising for its perfection of execution and expression, its strength of

coloring and absolute nature. Burton is a native of Dublin, and is but

twenty-five years old. The Irish connoisseurs claim for him the praise of

being the first artist in water-colors in the world. He paints with the

left hand. There are several other fine things by him in the exhibition.

Maclise, another Irish artist, has a picture in the exhibition,

representing a dramatic author offering his piece to an actor. The story

is told in Gil Blas. It is a miracle of execution, though it has the fault

of hardness and too equal a distribution of light. I have no time to speak

more at large of this exhibition, and my letter is already too long.

This afternoon we sail for Liverpool.

Letter XXVI.

The Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell.

London, _July_ 28, 1845.

Since we came to England we have visited the Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell, in

the neighborhood of London. It is a large building, divided into numerous

apartments, with the plainest accommodations, for the insane poor of the

county of Middlesex. It is superintended by Dr. Conolly, who is most

admirably fitted for the place he fills, by his great humanity, sagacity,

and ingenuity.

I put these qualities together as necessary to each other. Mere humanity,

without tact and skill, would fail deplorably. The rude and coarse methods

of government which consist in severity, are the most obvious ones; they

suggest themselves to the dullest minds, and cost nothing but bodily

strength to put them in execution; the gentler methods require reflection,

knowledge, and dexterity. It is these which Dr. Conolly applies with

perfect success. He has taken great pains to make himself acquainted, by

personal observation, with the treatment of the insane in different

hospitals, not only in England, but on the continent. He found that to be

the most efficacious which interferes least with their personal liberty,

and on this principle, the truth of which an experience of several years

has now confirmed, he founded the system of treatment at Hanwell.

We had letters to Dr. Conolly, with the kindness and gentleness of whose

manners we were much struck. He conducted us over the several wards of the

Asylum. We found in it a thousand persons of both sexes, not one of whom

was in seclusion, that is to say confined because it was dangerous to

allow him to go at large; nor were they subjected to any apparent

restraint whatever. Some were engaged in reading, some in exercises and

games of skill; of the females some were occupied in sewing, others at

work in the kitchen or the laundry; melancholic patients were walking

about in silence or sitting gloomily by themselves; idiots were rocking

their bodies backward and forward as they sat, but all were peaceable in

their demeanor, and the greatest quiet prevailed. No chastisement of any

kind is inflicted; the lunatic is always treated as a patient, and never

as an offender. When he becomes so outrageous and violent that his

presence can be endured no longer, he is put into a room with padded walls

and floors where he can do himself no mischief, and where his rage is

allowed to exhale. Even the straight jacket is unknown here.

I said that the demeanor of all the patients with whom the Asylum was

swarming was peaceable. There was one exception. On entering one of the

wards, a girl of an earnest and determined aspect, as soon as she saw Dr.

Conolly began to scream violently, and sprang towards him, thrusting aside

the bystanders by main force. Two of the female attendants came

immediately up and strove to appease her, holding her back without

severity, as a mother would restrain her infant. I saw them struggling

with her for some time; how they finally disposed of her I did not

observe, but her screams had ceased before we left the ward.

Among the patients was one who, we were told, was remarkable for his

extravagant love of finery, and whose cell was plastered over with glaring

colored prints and patches of colored paper ornamentally disposed. He wore

on his hat a broad strip of tarnished lace, and had decorated his

waistcoat with several perpendicular rows of pearl buttons.

"You have made your room very fine here," said the doctor.

"Yes," said he, smiling and evidently delighted, "but, my dear sir, all is

vanity—all is vanity, sir, and vexation of spirit. There is but one thing

that we ought to strive for, and that is the kingdom of heaven."

As there was no disputing this proposition, we passed on to another cell,

at the door of which stood a tall, erect personage, who was busy with a

pot of paint and a brush, inscribing the pannels with mottoes and scraps

of verse. The walls of his room were covered with poetry and pithy

sentences. Some of the latter appeared to be of his own composition, and,

were not badly turned; their purport generally was this: that birth is but

a trivial accident, and that virtue and talent are the only true nobility.

This man was found wandering about in Chiswick, full of a plan for

educating the Prince of Wales in a manner to enable him to fill the throne

with credit and usefulness. As his name could not be learned, the

appellation of "Chiswick" was given him, which he had himself adopted,

styling himself Mr. "Chiswick" in his mottoes, but always taking care to

put the name between inverted commas.

As we proceeded, a man rose from his seat, and laying both hands on a

table before him, so as to display his fingers, ornamented with rings made

of black ribbon, in which glass buttons were set for jewels, addressed Dr.

Conolly with great respect, formally setting forth that he was in great

want of a new coat for Sundays, the one he had on being positively unfit

to appear in, and that a better had been promised him. The doctor stopped,

inquired into the case, and the poor fellow was gratified by the assurance

that the promised coat should be speedily forthcoming.

In his progress through the wards Dr. Conolly listened with great patience

to the various complaints of the inmates. One of them came up and told us

that he did not think the methods of the institution judicious. "The

patients," said he, "are many of them growing worse. One in particular,

who has been here for several weeks, I can see is growing worse every

day." Dr. Conolly asked the name of this patient—"I can not tell," said

the man, "but I can bring him to you." "Bring him then," said the doctor;

and after a moment's absence he returned, leading up one of the healthiest

and quietest looking men in the ward. "He looks better to be sure," said

the man, "but he is really worse." A burst of laughter from the patients

who stood by followed this saying, and one of them looking at me

knowingly, touched his forehead to intimate that the objector was not

exactly in his senses.

In one of the female wards we were introduced, as gentlemen from America,

to a respectable-looking old lady in black, who sat with a crutch by her

side. "Are you not lawyers?" she asked, and when we assured her that we

were only Yankees, she rebuked us mildly for assuming such a disguise,

when she knew very well that we were a couple of attorneys. "And you,

doctor," she added, "I am surprised that you should have any thing to do

with such a deception." The doctor answered that he was very sorry she had

so bad an opinion of him, as she must be sensible that he had never said

any thing to her which was not true. "Ah, doctor," she rejoined, "but you

are the dupe of these people."

It was in the same ward, I think, that a well-dressed woman, in a bonnet

and shawl, was promenading the room, carrying a bible and two smaller

volumes, apparently prayer or hymn books. "Have you heard the very

reverend Mr. ——, in —— chapel?" she asked of my fellow-traveller. I

have unfortunately forgotten the name of the preacher and his chapel. On

being answered in the negative, "Then go and hear him," she added, "when

you return to London." She went on to say that the second coming of the

Saviour was to take place, and the world to be destroyed in a very few

days, and that she had a commission to proclaim the approach of that

event. "These poor people," said she, "think that I am here on the same

account as themselves, when I am only here to prepare the way for the

second coming."

"I'm thinking, please yer honor, that it is quite time I was let out of

this place," said a voice as we entered one of the wards. Dr. Conolly told

me that he had several Irish patients in the asylum, and that they gave

him the most trouble on account of the hurry in which they were to be

discharged. We heard the same request eagerly made in the same brogue by

various other patients of both sexes.

As I left this multitude of lunatics, promiscuously gathered from the poor

and the reduced class, comprising all varieties of mental disease, from

idiocy to madness, yet all of them held in such admirable order by the law

of kindness, that to the casual observer most of them betrayed no symptoms

of insanity, and of the rest, many appeared to be only very odd people,

quietly pursuing their own harmless whims, I could not but feel the

highest veneration for the enlightened humanity by which the establishment

was directed. I considered, also, if the feeling of personal liberty, the

absence of physical restraint, and the power of moral motives, had such

power to hold together in perfect peace and order, even a promiscuous band

of lunatics, how much greater must be their influence over the minds of

men in a state of sanity, and on how false a foundation rest all the

governments of force! The true basis of human polity, appointed by God in

our nature, is the power of moral motives, which is but another term for

public opinion.

Of the political controversies which at present agitate the country, the

corn-law question is that which calls forth the most feeling; I mean on

the part of those who oppose the restrictions on the introduction of

foreign grain—for, on the other side, it appears to me that the battle is

languidly fought. Nothing can exceed the enthusiasm of the adversaries of

the corn-laws. With some of them the repeal of the tax on bread is the

remedy for all political evils. "Free trade, free trade," is the burden of

their conversation, and although a friend of free trade myself, to the

last and uttermost limit, I have been in circles in England, in which I

had a little too much of it. Yet this is an example to prove what a strong

hold the question has taken of the minds of men, and how completely the

thoughts of many are absorbed by it. Against such a feeling as that which

has been kindled in Great Britain, on the corn-law question, no law in our

country could stand. So far as I can judge, it is spreading, as well as

growing stronger. I am told that many of the farmers have become

proselytes of the League. The League is a powerful and prodigiously

numerous association, with ample and increasing funds, publishing able

tracts, supporting well-conducted journals, and holding crowded public

meetings, which are addressed by some of the ablest speakers in the United

Kingdom. I attended one of these at Covent Garden. Stage, pit, boxes, and

gallery of that large building were filled with one of the most

respectable-looking audiences, men and women, I have ever seen. Among the

speakers of the evening were Cobden and Fox. Cobden in physiognomy and

appearance might almost pass for an American, and has a certain New

England sharpness and shrewdness in his way of dealing with a subject. His

address was argumentative, yet there was a certain popular clearness about

it, a fertility of familiar illustration, and an earnest feeling, which

made it uncommonly impressive. Fox is one of the most fluent and ingenious

speakers I ever heard in a popular assembly. Both were listened to by an

audience which seemed to hang on every word that fell from their lips.

The musical world here are talking about Colman's improvement in the

piano. I have seen the instrument which the inventor brought out from

America. It is furnished with a row of brass reeds, like those of the

instrument called the Seraphine. These take up the sound made by the

string of the piano, and prolong it to any degree which is desired. It is

a splicing of the sounds of one instrument upon another. Yet if the

invention were to be left where it is, in Colman's instrument, it could

not succeed with the public. The notes of the reeds are too harsh and

nasal, and want the sweetness and mellowness of tone which belong to the

string of the piano.

At present the invention is in the hands of Mr. Rand, the portrait

painter, a countryman of ours, who is one of the most ingenious

mechanicians in the world. He has improved the tones of the reeds till

they rival, in softness and fullness, those of the strings, and, in fact,

can hardly be distinguished from them, so that the sounds of the two

instruments run into one another without any apparent difference. Mr. Rand

has contrived three or four different machines for making the reeds with

dispatch and precision; and if the difficulty of keeping the strings,

which are undergoing a constant relaxation, in perfect unison with the

reeds can be overcome, I see nothing to prevent the most complete and

brilliant success.

Letter XXVII.

Changes in Paris.

Paris, _August_ 9, 1845.

My last letter was dated at London, in my passage across England. I have

been nearly a fortnight in Paris. In ten years I find a considerable

change in the external aspect of this great capital. The streets are

cleaner, in many of them sidewalks have been made, not always the widest

to be sure, but smoothly floored with the asphaltum of Seyssel, which

answers the purpose admirably; the gutters have been removed from the

middle of the street to the edge of the curbstone, and lately the

curbstone has been made to project over them, so that the foot-passengers

may escape the bespattering from carriage-wheels which he would otherwise

be sure to get in a rainy day, and there are many such days in this

climate—it has rained every day but one since I entered France.

New passages have been cut from street to street, old streets have been

made wider, new streets have been made, with broad sidewalks, and stately

rows of houses hewn from the easily wrought cream-colored stone of the

quarries of the Seine. The sidewalks of the Boulevards, and all the

public squares, wherever carriages do not pass, have been covered with

this smooth asphaltic pavement, and in the Boulevards have been erected

some magnificent buildings, with richly carved pilasters and other

ornaments in relief, and statues in niches, and balconies supported by

stone brackets wrought into bunches of foliage. New columns and statues

have been set up, and new fountains pour out their waters. Among these is

the fountain of Molière, in the Rue Richelieu, where the effigy of the

comic author, chiseled from black marble, with flowing periwig and

broad-skirted coat, presides over a group of naked allegorical figures in

white marble, at whose feet the water is gushing out.

In external morality also, there is some improvement; public gaming-houses

no longer exist, and there are fewer of those uncleanly nuisances which

offend against the code of what Addison calls the lesser morals. The

police have had orders to suppress them on the Boulevards and the public

squares. The Parisians are, however, the same gay people as ever, and as

easily amused as when I saw them last. They crowd in as great numbers to

the opera and the theatres; the Boulevards, though better paved, are the

same lively places; the guingettes are as thronged; the public gardens are

as full of dancers. In these, as at the New Tivoli, lately opened at

Chateau Rouge in the suburbs, a broad space made smooth for the purpose is

left between tents, where the young grisettes of Paris, married and

unmarried, or in that equivocal state which lies somewhere between, dance

on Sunday evening till midnight.

At an earlier hour on the same day, as well as on other days, at old

Franconi's Hippodrome, among the trees, just beyond the triumphal arch of

Neuilly, imitations of the steeple chase, with female riders who leap over

hedges, and of the ancient chariot-races with charioteers helmeted and

mailed, and standing in gilt tubs on wheels, are performed in a vast

amphiteatre, to a crowd that could scarcely have been contained in the

Colosseum of Rome.

I have heard since I came here, two or three people lamenting the physical

degeneracy of the Parisians. One of them quoted a saying from a report of

Marshal Soult, that the Parisian recruits for the army of late years were

neither men nor soldiers. This seems to imply a moral as well as a

physical deterioration. "They are growing smaller and smaller in stature,"

said the gentleman who made this quotation, "and it is difficult to find

among them men who are of the proper height to serve as soldiers. The

principal cause no doubt is in the prevailing licentiousness. Among that

class who make the greater part of the population of Paris, the women of

the finest persons rarely become mothers." Whatever may be the cause, I

witnessed a remarkable example of the smallness of the Parisian stature on

the day of my arrival, which was the last of the three days kept in memory

of the revolution of July. I went immediately to the Champs Elysées, to

see the people engaged in their amusements. Some twenty boys, not fully

grown, as it seemed to me at first, were dancing and capering with great

agility, to the music of an instrument. Looking at them nearer, I saw that

those who had seemed to me boys of fourteen or fifteen, were mature young

men, some of them with very fierce mustaches.

Since my arrival I have seen the picture which Vanderlyn is painting for

the Rotunda at Washington. It represents the Landing of Columbus on the

shores of the New World. The great discoverer, accompanied by his

lieutenant and others, is represented as taking possession of the newly

found country. Some of the crew are seen scrambling for what they imagine

to be gold dust in the sands of the shore, and at a little distance among

the trees are the naked natives, in attitudes of wonder and worship. The

grouping is happy, the expression and action skillfully varied—the

coloring, so far as I could judge in the present state of the picture,

agreeable. "Eight or ten weeks hard work," said the artist, "will complete

it." It is Vanderlyn's intention to finish it, and take it to the United

States in the course of the autumn.

Letter XXVIII.

A Journey through The Netherlands.

Arnheim, Guelderland, _August_ 19, 1848.

After writing my last I was early asleep, that I might set out early the

next morning in the diligence for Brussels. This I did, and passing

through Compeigne, where Joan of Arc was made prisoner—a town lying in

the midst of extensive forests, with here and there a noble group of

trees; and through Noyon, where Calvin was born, and in the old Gothic

church of which he doubtless worshiped; and through Cambray, where Fenelon

lived; and through fields of grain and poppy and clover, where women were

at work, reaping the wheat, or mowing and stacking the ripe poppies, or

digging with spades in their wet clothes, for it had rained every day but

one during the thirteen we were in France, we arrived in the afternoon of

the second day at the French frontier. From this a railway took us in a

few hours to Brussels. Imagine a rather clean-looking city, of large

light-colored buildings mostly covered with stucco, situated on an

irregular declivity, with a shady park in the highest part surrounded by

palaces, and a little lower down a fine old Gothic cathedral, and still

lower down, the old Town Hall, also of Gothic architecture, and scarcely

less venerable, standing in a noble paved square, around which are white

and stately edifices, built in the era of the Spanish dominion;—imagine

handsome shops and a good-looking people, with a liberal sprinkling of

priests, in their long-skirted garments, and throw in the usual proportion

of dirt and misery, and mendicancy, in the corners and by-places, and you

have Brussels before you.

It still rained, but we got a tilbury and drove out to see the

battle-ground of Waterloo. It was a dreary drive beside the wood of

Soignes and through a part of it,—that melancholy-looking forest of

tall-stemmed beeches—beech, beech, nothing but beech—and through the

Walloon villages—Waterloo is one of them—and through fields where wet

women were at work, and over roads where dirty children by dozens were

dabbling like ducks in the puddles. At last we stopped at the village of

Mont St. Jean, whence we walked through the slippery mud to the mound

erected in the midst of the battle-field, and climbed to its top,

overlooking a country of gentle declivities and hollows. Here the various

positions of the French and allied armies during the battle which decided

the fate of an empire, were pointed out to us by a young Walloon who sold

wine and drams in a shed beside the monument. The two races which make up

the population of Belgium are still remarkably distinct, notwithstanding

the centuries which have elapsed since they occupied the same country

together. The Flemings of Teutonic origin, keep their blue eyes and fair

hair, and their ancient language—the same nearly as the Dutch of the

sixteenth century. The Walloons, a Celtic race, or Celtic mixed with

Roman, are still known by their dark hair and black eyes, and speak a

dialect derived from the Latin, resembling that of some of the French

provinces. Both languages are uncultivated, and the French has been

adopted as the language of commerce and literature in Belgium.

If you would see a city wholly Flemish in its character, you should visit

Antwerp, to which the railway takes you in an hour and a half. The

population here is almost without Walloon intermixture, and there is

little to remind you of what you have seen in France, except the French

books in the booksellers' windows. The arts themselves have a character of

their own which never came across the Alps. The churches, the interior of

which is always carefully kept fresh with paint and gilding, are crowded

with statues in wood, carved with wonderful skill and spirit by Flemish

artists, in centuries gone by—oaken saints looking down from pedestals,

and Adam and Eve in the remorse of their first transgression supporting,

by the help of the tree of knowledge and the serpent, a curiously wrought

pulpit. The walls are hung with pictures by the Flemish masters, wherever

space can be found for them. In the Cathedral, is the Descent from the

Cross, by Rubens, which proves, what one might almost doubt who had only

seen his pictures in the Louvre, that he was a true artist and a man of

genius in the noblest sense of the term.

We passed two nights in Antwerp, and then went down the Scheldt in a

steamer, which, in ten hours, brought us to Rotterdam, sometimes crossing

an arm of the sea, and sometimes threading a broad canal. The houses on

each side of these channels, after we entered Holland, were for the most

part freshly painted; the flat plains on each side protected by

embankments, and streaked by long wide ditches full of water, and rows of

pollard willows. Windmills by scores, some grinding corn, but most of them

pumping water out of the meadows and pouring it into the channel, stood on

the bank and were swinging their long arms madly in a high wind.

On arriving at Rotterdam, you perceive at once that you are in Holland.

The city has as many canals as streets, the canals are generally overhung

with rows of elms, and the streets kept scrupulously clean with the water

of the canals, which is salt. Every morning there is a vigorous splashing

and mopping performed before every door by plump servant girls, in white

caps and thick wooden shoes. Our hotel stood fronting a broad sheet of

water like the lagoons at Venice, where a solid and straight stone wharf

was shaded with a row of elms, and before our door lay several huge

vessels fastened to the wharf, which looked as if they were sent thither

to enjoy a vacation, for they were neither loading nor unloading, nor did

any person appear to be busy about them. Rotterdam was at that time in

the midst of a fair which filled the open squares and the wider streets of

the city with booths, and attracted crowds of people from the country.

There were damsels from North Holland, fair as snow, and some of them

pretty, in long-eared lace caps, with their plump arms bare; and there

were maidens from another province, the name of which I did not learn,

equally good-looking, with arms as bare, and faces in white muslin caps

drawn to a point on each cheek. Olycoeks were frying, and waffles baking

in temporary kitchens on each side of the streets.

The country about Rotterdam is little better than a marsh. The soil serves

only for pasture, and the fields are still covered with "yellow blossoms,"

as in the time of Goldsmith, and still tufted with willows. I saw houses

in the city standing in pools of dull blue water, reached by a bridge from

the street: I suppose, however, there might be gardens behind them. Many

of the houses decline very much from the perpendicular; they are, however,

apparently well-built and are spacious. We made no long stay in Rotterdam,

but after looking at its bronze statue of Erasmus, and its cathedral,

which is not remarkable in any other respect than that it is a Gothic

building of brick, stone being scarce in Holland, we took the stage-coach

for the Hague the next day.

Green meadows spotted with buttercups and dandelions, flat and low, lower

than the canals with which the country is intersected, and which bring in

between them, at high tide, the waters of the distant sea, stretched on

every side. They were striped with long lines of water which is constantly

pumped out by the windmills, and sent with the ebb tide through the canals

to the ocean. Herds of cattle were feeding among the bright verdure. From

time to time, we passed some pleasant country-seat, the walls bright with

paint, and the grounds surrounded by a ditch, call it a moat if you

please, the surface of which was green with duck-weed. But within this

watery inclosure, were little artificial elevations covered with a

closely-shaven turf, and plantations of shrubbery, and in the more

extensive and ostentatious of them, were what might be called groves and

forests. Before one of these houses was a fountain with figures, mouths of

lions and other animals, gushing profusely with water, which must have

been pumped up for the purpose, into a reservoir, by one of the windmills.

Passing through Schiedam, still famous for its gin, and Delft, once famous

for its crockery, we reached in a couple of hours the Hague, the cleanest

of cities, paved with yellow brick, and as full of canals as Rotterdam. I

called on an old acquaintance, who received me with a warm embrace and a

kiss on each cheek. He was in his morning-gown, which he immediately

exchanged for an elegant frock coat of the latest Parisian cut, and took

us to see Baron Vorstolk's collection of pictures, which contains some

beautiful things by the Flemish artists, and next, to the public

collection called the Museum. From this we drove to the Chateau du Bois,

a residence of the Dutch Stadtholders two hundred years ago, when Holland

was a republic, and a powerful and formidable one. It is pleasantly

situated in the edge of a wood, which is said to be part of an original

forest of the country. I could believe this, for here the soil rises above

the marshy level of Holland, and trees of various kinds grow irregularly

intermingled, as in the natural woods of our own country. The Chateau du

Bois is principally remarkable for a large room with a dome, the interior

of which is covered with large paintings by Rubens, Jordaens, and other

artists.

Our friend took leave of us, and we drove out to Scheveling, where Charles

II. embarked for England, when he returned to take possession of his

throne. Here dwell a people who supply the fish-market of the Hague, speak

among themselves a dialect which is not understood elsewhere in Holland,

and wear the same costume which they wore centuries ago. We passed several

of the women going to market or returning, with large baskets on their

heads, placed on the crown of a broad-brimmed straw bonnet, tied at the

sides under the chin, and strapping creatures they were, striding along in

their striped black and white petticoats. In the streets of Scheveling, I

saw the tallest woman I think I ever met with, a very giantess,

considerably more than six feet high, straddling about the street of the

little village, and scouring and scrubbing the pavement with great

energy. Close at hand was the shore; a strong west wind was driving the

surges of the North Sea against it. A hundred fishing vessels rocking in

the surf, moored and lashed together with ropes, formed a line along the

beach; the men of Scheveling, in knit woollen caps, short blue jackets,

and short trowsers of prodigious width, were walking about on the shore,

but the wind was too high and the sea too wild for them to venture out.

Along this coast, the North Sea has heaped a high range of sand-hills,

which protect the low lands within from its own inundations; but to the

north and south the shore is guarded by embankments, raised by the hand of

man with great cost, and watched and kept in constant repair.

We left the Hague, and taking the railway, in a little more than two hours

were at Amsterdam, a great commercial city in decay, where nearly half of

the inhabitants live on the charity of the rest. The next morning was

Sunday, and taking advantage of an interval of fair weather, for it still

continued to rain every day, I went to the Oudekerk, or Old Church, as the

ancient Cathedral is called, which might have been an impressive building

in its original construction, but is now spoiled by cross-beams, paint,

galleries, partitions, pews, and every sort of architectural enormity. But

there is a noble organ, with a massive and lofty front of white marble

richly sculptured, occupying the west end of the chancel. I listened to a

sermon in Dutch, the delivery of which, owing partly to the disagreeable

voice of the speaker and partly no doubt to my ignorance of the language,

seemed to me a kind of barking. The men all wore their hats during the

service, but half the women were without bonnets. When the sermon and

prayer were over, the rich tones of the organ broke forth and flooded the

place with melody.

Every body visits Broek, near Amsterdam, the pride of Dutch villages, and

to Broek I went accordingly. It stands like the rest, among dykes and

canals, but consists altogether of the habitations of persons in

comfortable circumstances, and is remarkable, as you know, for its

scrupulous cleanliness. The common streets and footways, are kept in the

same order as the private garden-walks. They are paved with yellow bricks,

and as a fair was to open in the place that afternoon, the most public

parts of them were sanded for the occasion, but elsewhere, they appeared

as if just washed and mopped. I have never seen any collection of human

habitations so free from any thing offensive to the senses. Saardam, where

Peter the Great began his apprenticeship as a shipwright, is among the

sights of Holland, and we went the next day to look at it. This also is

situated on a dyke, and is an extremely neat little village, but has not

the same appearance of opulence in the dwellings. We were shown the

chamber in which the Emperor of Russia lodged, and the hole in the wall

where he slept, for in the old Dutch houses, as in the modern ones of the

farmers, the bed is a sort of high closet, or, more properly speaking, a

shelf within the wall, from which a door opens into the room. I should

have mentioned that, in going to Broek, I stopped to look at one of the

farm-houses of the country, and at Saardam I visited another. They were

dairy houses, in which the milk of large herds is made into butter. The

lower story of the dwelling, paved with bricks, is used in winter as a

stable for the cattle; in the summer, it is carefully cleansed and

painted, so that not a trace of its former use remains, and it then

becomes both the dairy and the abode of the family. The story above is as

neat as the hands of Dutch housewives can make it; the parlor, the

dining-room, the little boxes in the wall which hold the beds, are

resplendent with cleanliness.

In going from Amsterdam by railway to Utrecht, we perceived the canals by

which the plains were intersected became fewer and fewer, and finally we

began to see crops of grain and potatoes, a sign that we had emerged from

the marshes. We stopped to take a brief survey of Utrecht. A part of its

old cathedral has been converted into a beautiful Gothic church, the rest

having been levelled many years ago by a whirlwind. But what I found most

remarkable in the city was its public walks. The old walls by which

Utrecht was once inclosed having been thrown down, the rubbish has formed

hillocks and slopes which almost surround the entire city and border one

of its principal canals. On these hillocks and slopes, trees and shrubs

have been planted, and walks laid out through the green turf, until it

has become one of the most varied and charming pleasure-grounds I ever

saw—swelling into little eminences, sinking into little valleys,

descending in some places smoothly to the water, and in others impending

over it. We fell in with a music-master, of whom we asked a question or

two. He happened to know a little German, by the help of which he pieced

out his Dutch so as to make it tolerably intelligible to me. He insisted

upon showing us every thing remarkable in Utrecht, and finally walked us

tired.

The same evening the diligence brought us to Arnheim, a neat-looking town

with about eighteen hundred inhabitants, in the province of Guelderland,

where the region retains not a trace of the peculiarities of Holland. The

country west of the town rises into commanding eminences, overlooking the

noble Rhine, and I feel already that I am in Germany, though I have yet to

cross the frontier.

Letter XXIX.

American Artists Abroad.

Rome, _October_, 1845.

You would perhaps like to hear what the American artists on the continent

are doing. I met with Leutze at Düsseldorf. After a sojourn of some days

in Holland, in which I was obliged to talk to the Dutchmen in German and

get my answers in Dutch, with but a dim apprehension of each other's

meaning, as you may suppose, on both sides; after being smoked through and

through like a herring, with the fumes of bad tobacco in the railway

wagons, and in the diligence which took us over the long and monotonous

road on the plains of the Rhine between Arnheim and Düsseldorf—after

dodging as well as we were able, the English travellers, generally the

most disagreeable of the travelling tribe, who swarm along the Rhine in

the summer season, it was a refreshment to stop a day at Düsseldorf and

take breath, and meet an American face or two. We found Leutze engaged

upon a picture, the subject of which is John Knox reproving Queen Mary. It

promises to be a capital work. The stern gravity of Knox, the

embarrassment of the Queen, and the scorn with which the French damsels

of her court regard the saucy Reformer, are extremely well expressed, and

tell the story impressively.

At Düsseldorf, which is the residence of so many eminent painters, we

expected to find some collection, or at least some of the best specimens,

of the works of the modern German school. It was not so, however—fine

pictures are painted at Düsseldorf, but they are immediately carried

elsewhere. We visited the studio of Schröter—a man with humor in every

line of his face, who had nothing to show us but a sketch, just prepared

for the easel, of the scene in Goëthe's Faust, where Mephistophiles, in

Auerbach's cellar, bores the edge of the table with a gimlet, and a stream

of champagne gushes out. Köhler, an eminent artist, allowed us to see a

clever painting on his easel, in a state of considerable forwardness,

representing the rejoicings of the Hebrew maidens at the victory of David

over Goliath. At Lessing's—a painter whose name stands in the first rank,

and whom we did not find at home—we saw a sketch on which he was engaged,

representing the burning of John Huss; yet it was but a sketch, a painting

in embryo.

But I am wandering from the American artists. At Cologne, whither we were

accompanied by Leutze, he procured us the sight of his picture of Columbus

before the Council of Salamanca, one of his best. Leutze ranks high in

Germany, as a young man of promise, devoting himself with great energy and

earnestness to his art.

At Florence we found Greenough just returned from a year's residence at

Graefenberg, whence he had brought back his wife, a patient of Priessnitz

and the water cure, in florid health. He is now applying himself to the

completion of the group which he has engaged to execute for the capitol at

Washington. It represents an American settler, an athletic man, in a

hunting shirt and cap, a graceful garb, by the way, rescuing a female and

her infant from a savage who has just raised his tomahawk to murder them.

Part of the group, the hunter and the Indian, is already in marble, and

certainly the effect is wonderfully fine and noble. The hunter has

approached his enemy unexpectedly from behind, and grasped both his arms,

holding them back, in such a manner that he has no command of their

muscles, even for the purpose of freeing himself. Besides the particular

incident represented by the group, it may pass for an image of the

aboriginal race of America overpowered and rendered helpless by the

civilized race. Greenough's statue of Washington is not as popular as it

deserves to be; but the work on which he is now engaged I am very sure

will meet with a different reception.

In a letter from London, I spoke of the beautiful figure of the Greek

slave, by Powers. At Florence I saw in his studio, the original model,

from which his workmen were cutting two copies in marble. At the same

place I saw his Proserpine, an ideal bust of great sweetness and beauty,

the fair chest swelling out from a circle of leaves of the acanthus. About

this also the workmen were busy, and I learned that seven copies of it

had been recently ordered from the hand of the artist. By its side stood

the unfinished statue of Eve, with the fatal apple in her hand, an earlier

work, which the world has just begun to admire. I find that connoisseurs

are divided in opinion concerning the merit of Powers as a sculptor.

All allow him the highest degree of skill in execution, but some deny that

he has shown equal ability in his conceptions. "He is confessedly," said

one of them to me, who, however, had not seen his Greek slave, "the

greatest sculptor of busts in the world—equal, in fact, to any that the

world ever saw; the finest heads of antiquity are not of a higher order

than his." He then went on to express his regret that Powers had not

confined his labors to a department in which he was so pre-eminent. I have

heard that Powers, who possesses great mechanical skill, has devised

several methods of his own for giving precision and perfection to the

execution of his works. It may be that my unlearned eyes are dazzled by

this perfection, but really I can not imagine any thing more beautiful of

its kind than his statue of the Greek slave.

Gray is at this moment in Florence, though he is soon coming to Rome. He

has made some copies from Titian, one of which I saw. It was a Madonna and

child, in which the original painting was rendered with all the fidelity

of a mirror. So indisputably was it a Titian, and so free from the

stiffness of a copy, that, as I looked at it, I fully sympathized with

the satisfaction expressed by the artist at having attained the method of

giving with ease the peculiarity of coloring which belongs to Titian's

pictures.

An American landscape painter of high merit is G. L. Brown, now residing

at Florence. He possesses great knowledge of detail, which he knows how to

keep in its place, subduing it, and rendering it subservient to the

general effect. I saw in his studio two or three pictures, in which I

admired his skill in copying the various forms of foliage and other

objects, nor was I less pleased to see that he was not content with this

sort of merit, but, in going back from the foreground, had the art of

passing into that appearance of an infinity of forms and outlines which

the eye meets with in nature. I could not help regretting that one who

copied nature so well, should not prefer to represent her as she appears

in our own fresh and glorious land, instead of living in Italy and

painting Italian landscapes.

To refer again to foreign artists—before I left Florence I visited the

annual exhibition which had been opened in the Academy of the Fine Arts.

There were one or two landscapes reminding me somewhat of Cole's manner,

but greatly inferior, and one or two good portraits, and two or three

indifferent historical pictures. The rest appeared to me decidedly bad;

wretched landscapes; portraits, some of which were absolutely hideous,

stiff, ill-colored, and full of grimace.

Here at Rome, we have an American sculptor of great ability, Henry K.

Brown, who is just beginning to be talked about. He is executing a statue

of Ruth gleaning in the field of Boaz, of which the model has been ready

for some months, and is also modelling a figure of Rebecca at the Well.

When I first saw his Ruth I was greatly struck with it, but after visiting

the studios of Wyatt and Gibson, and observing their sleek imitations of

Grecian art, their learned and faultless statues, nymphs or goddesses or

gods of the Greek mythology, it was with infinite pleasure that my eyes

rested again on the figure and face of Ruth, perhaps not inferior in

perfection of form, but certainly informed with a deep human feeling which

I found not in their elaborate works. The artist has chosen the moment in

which Ruth is addressed by Boaz as she stands among the gleaners. He

quoted to me the lines of Keats, on the song of the nightingale—

"Perchance the self-same song that found a path

To the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien's corn."

She is not in tears, but her aspect is that of one who listens in sadness;

her eyes are cast down, and her thoughts are of the home of her youth, in

the land of Moab. Over her left arm hangs a handful of ears of wheat,

which she has gathered from the ground, and her right rests on the drapery

about her bosom. Nothing can be more graceful than her attitude or more

expressive of melancholy sweetness and modesty than her physiognomy. One

of the copies which the artist was executing—there were two of them—is

designed for a gentleman in Albany. Brown will shortly, or I am greatly

mistaken, achieve a high reputation among the sculptors of the time.

Rosseter, an American painter, who has passed six years in Italy, is

engaged on a large picture, the subject of which is taken from the same

portion of Scripture history, and which is intended for the gallery of an

American gentleman. It represents Naomi with her two daughters-in-law,

when "Orpah kissed her, but Ruth clave unto her." The principal figures

are those of the Hebrew matron and Ruth, who have made their simple

preparations for their journey to the land of Israel, while Orpah is

turning sorrowfully away to join a caravan of her country people. This

group is well composed, and there is a fine effect of the rays of the

rising sun on the mountains and rocks of Moab.

At the studio of Lang, a Philadelphia artist, I saw two agreeable

pictures, one of which represents a young woman whom her attendants and

companions are arraying for her bridal. As a companion piece to this, but

not yet finished, he had upon the easel a picture of a beautiful girl,

decked for espousals of a different kind, about to take the veil, and

kneeling in the midst of a crowd of friends and priests, while one of them

is cutting off her glossy and flowing hair. Both pictures are designed for

a Boston gentleman, but a duplicate of the first has already been painted

for the King of Wirtemberg.

Letter XXX.

Buffalo.—Cleveland.—Detroit.

Steamer Oregon, Lake Huron, Off Thunder Bay, _July_ 24, 1846.

As I approached the city of Buffalo the other morning, from the east, I

found myself obliged to confess that much of the beauty of a country is

owing to the season. For twenty or thirty miles before we reached Lake

Erie, the fields of this fertile region looked more and more arid and

sun-scorched, and I could not but contrast their appearance with that of

the neighborhood of New York, where in a district comparatively sterile,

an uncommonly showery season has kept the herbage fresh and deep, and made

the trees heavy with leaves. Here, on the contrary, I saw meadows tinged

by the drought with a reddish hue, pastures grazed to the roots of the

grass, and trees spreading what seemed to me a meagre shade. Yet the

harvests of wheat, and even of hay, in western New York, are said to be by

no means scanty.

Buffalo continues to extend on every side, but the late additions to the

city do not much improve its beauty. Its nucleus of well-built streets

does not seem to have grown much broader within the last five years, but

the suburbs are rapidly spreading—small wooden houses, scattered or in

clusters, built hastily for emigrants along unpaved and powdery streets. I

saw, however, on a little excursion which I made into the surrounding

country, that pleasant little neighborhoods are rising up at no great

distance, with their neat houses, their young trees, and their new

shrubbery. They have a fine building material at Buffalo—a sort of brown

stone, easily wrought—but I was sorry to see that most of the houses

built of it, both in the town and country, seemed to have stood for

several years.

We visited the new fort which the government is erecting on the lake, a

little to the north of the town, commanding the entrance of Niagara river.

It is small, but of wonderful apparent strength, with walls of prodigious

thickness, and so sturdy in its defences that it seemed to me one might as

well think of cannonading the cliffs of Weehawken. It is curious to see

how, as we grow more ingenious in the means of attack, we devise more

effectual means of defence. A castle of the middle ages, in which a grim

warrior of that time would hold his enemies at bay for years, would now be

battered down before breakfast. The finest old forts of the last century

are now found to be unsafe against attack. That which we have at St.

Augustine was an uncommonly good sample of its kind, but when I was in

Florida, three or four years since, an engineer of the United States was

engaged in reconstructing it. Do mankind gain any thing by these

improvements, as they are called, in the art of war? Do not these more

dreadful engines of attack on the one side, and these more perfect means

of protection on the other, leave the balance just where it was before?

On Tuesday evening, at seven o'clock, we took passage in the steamer

Oregon, for Chicago, and soon lost sight of the roofs and spires of

Buffalo. A lady of Buffalo on her way to Cleveland placed herself at the

piano, and sang several songs with such uncommon sweetness and expression

that I saw no occasion to be surprised at what I heard of the concert of

Leopold de Meyer, at Buffalo, the night before. The concert room was

crowded with people clinging to each other like bees when they swarm, and

the whole affair seemed an outbreak of popular enthusiasm. A veteran

teacher of music in Buffalo, famous for being hard to be pleased by any

public musical entertainment, found himself unable to sit still during the

first piece played by De Meyer, but rose, in the fullness of his delight,

and continued standing. When the music ceased, he ran to him and shook

both of his hands, again and again, with most uncomfortable energy. At the

end of the next performance he sprang again on the platform and hugged the

artist so rapturously that the room rang with laughter. De Meyer was to

give another concert on Tuesday evening at Niagara Falls, and the people

of Buffalo were preparing to follow him.

The tastes of our people are certainly much changed within the last twenty

years. A friend of ours used to relate, as a good joke, the conversation

of two men, who came to the conclusion that Paganini was the greatest man

in the world. They were only a little in advance of their age. If such are

the honors reaped by De Meyer, we shall not be astonished if Sivori, when

he comes over, passes for the greatest man of his time.

The next morning found us with the southern shore of Lake Erie in sight—a

long line of woods, with here and there a cluster of habitations on the

shore. "That village where you see the light-house," said one of the

passengers, who came from the hills of Maine, "is Grand River, and from

that place to Cleveland, which is thirty miles distant, you have the most

beautiful country under the sun—perfectly beautiful, sir; not a hill the

whole way, and the finest farms that were ever seen; you can buy a good

farm there for two thousand dollars." In two or three hours afterward we

were at Cleveland, and I hastened on shore.

It is situated beyond a steep bank of the lake, nearly as elevated as the

shore at Brooklyn, which we call Brooklyn Heights. As I stood on the edge

of this bank and looked over the broad lake below me, stretching beyond

the sight and quivering in the summer wind, I was reminded of the lines of

Southey:

—"Along the bending line of shore

Such hue is thrown as when the peacock's neck

Assumes its proudest tint of amethyst,

Embathed in emerald glory."

But it was not only along the line of the shore that these hues

prevailed; the whole lake glowed with soft amethystine and emerald tinges,

in irregular masses, like the shades of watered silk. Cleveland stands in

that beautiful country without a hill, of which my fellow-passenger

spoke—a thriving village yet to grow into a proud city of the lake

country. It is built upon broad dusty ways, in which not a pebble is seen

in the fat dark earth of the lake shore, and which are shaded with

locust-trees, the variety called seed-locust, with crowded twigs and

clustered foliage—a tree chosen, doubtless, for its rapid growth, as the

best means of getting up a shade at the shortest notice. Here and there

were gardens filled with young fruit-trees; among the largest and hardiest

in appearance was the peach-tree, which here spreads broad and sturdy

branches, escapes the diseases that make it a short-lived tree in the

Atlantic states, and produces fruit of great size and richness. One of my

fellow-passengers could hardly find adequate expressions to signify his

high sense of the deliciousness of the Cleveland peaches.

I made my way to a street of shops: it had a busy appearance, more so than

usual, I was told, for a company of circus-riders, whose tents I had seen

from a distance on the lake, was in town, and this had attracted a throng

of people from the country. I saw a fruit-stall tended by a man who had

the coarsest red hair I think I ever saw, and of whom I bought two or

three enormous "bough apples," as he called them. He apologized for the

price he demanded. "The farmers," said he, "know that just now there is a

call for their early fruit, while the circus people are in town, and they

make me pay a 'igh price for it." I told him I perceived he was no Yankee.

"I am a Londoner," he replied; "and I left London twelve years ago to

slave and be a poor man in Ohio." He acknowledged, however, that he had

two or three times got together some property, "but the Lord," he said,

"laid his hand on it."

On returning to the steamer, I found a party of country people, mostly

young persons of both sexes, thin and lank figures, by no means equal, as

productions of the country, to their bough apples. They passed through the

fine spacious cabin on the upper deck, extending between the state-rooms

the whole length of the steamer. At length they came to a large mirror,

which stood at the stern, and seemed by its reflection to double the

length of the cabin. They walked on, as if they would extend their

promenade into the mirror, when suddenly observing the reflection of their

own persons advancing, and thinking it another party, they politely made

way to let it pass. The party in the mirror at the same moment turned to

the same side, which first showed them the mistake they had made. The

passengers had some mirth at their expense, but I must do our visitors the

justice to say that they joined in the laugh with a very good grace.